


To Be Well

by eon_s



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: 2D is trying, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Childhood Trauma, Denial of Feelings, Depression, Feels, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Recovery, Self-Hatred, Self-Indulgent, Substance Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Withdrawal, actually fuck it 'angst humour' is a thing and it's in here too in occasional moments, also acceptance of feelings but not in a healthy way, and now it's got chapters, everyone is trying and everything hurts, if you can't laugh while you're killing yourself when can you laugh?, murdoc is trying, no hate to Tesco i like your little rhubarb custard sweets as much as the next guy, self-sabotage, some headcanons but they're reasonably minor i think, the band is family, trying isn't fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:29:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27586109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eon_s/pseuds/eon_s
Summary: The self-help set never tell you how shit it feels - getting 'well.'(Set sometime around Désolé but is also fairly ambiguous.)
Relationships: Murdoc Niccals/Stuart "2D" Pot
Comments: 13
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Now with multiple chapters, more feels, and maybe even the possibility of an ending that isn't sad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even for me this is grim.
> 
> I relate to Murdoc way more than any person should. If it bleeds in, then it bleeds in. This whole thing wanted to be written so I wrote it, but I have no idea if it's anything anyone will get anything out of but me. Try your luck if you want.
> 
> (Also the briefly used expression 'like Mother Teresa by comparison' in this piece is just a colloquialism and not meant to be taken as an actual statement of support for Mother Teresa. She was a terrible person who had no business interfering in medical care. Look it up if you want. This has been my TED talk.)

* * *

He moves around the house like a ghost in the off-hours, avoiding the common areas unless absolutely vital. Most of the day is spent in the perpetual false-night of his room, blocking out his bandmates and the sun, shivering under three layers of blankets, sweating through his sheets.

It’s ugly, but withdrawals always are.

His guts are roiling, painful and hot like he’s eaten a bad prawn, and every so often, bile rises up to the back of his throat. He swallows it down and, at first, tries to distract himself with a cigarette, which works until he gags and inhales too fast and coughs hard enough to shit himself just a little.

The dam is broken after that, and it’s all he can do to rise from his filthy cocoon of soiled bedding and stagger to the bog down the hall. He feels like a bunch of limbs someone forgot to attach to a body when he collapses hard onto the toilet seat, the porcelain water tank like an ice block against his back. In the intermittent cramping and purging of his bowels that follows, he rests his head against the wall and makes soft, abortive little ‘huffs’ of breath that, if he had the physical energy, could be sobs.

_Not one to learn from your mistakes, eh?_

His subconscious, his id – whatever you want to call it – is a nasty piece of work that makes him look like Mother Teresa by comparison. He tries to ignore it, shutting his eyes tighter, but it’s hard to block out something that only exists in your head through conventional – that is, non-chemical – means.

_Well, go on then. Not like you don’t have a list of remedies long as your arm – isn’t that right, Doc?_

“Shut up,” he mutters, his mouth gummy and sticky like a pub floor. He knocks his head once into the wall for good measure and immediately regrets it, the nausea that follows forcing him to scoot back on the seat and wrench his legs apart. He gets most of the vomit into the bowl and none on the floor – thank Satan for small mercies as he’s in no mood to clean up – but enough lands in his pubic hair to be annoying and require a wash. The commingled smell of shit, sick, and stale sweat makes him dry heave even as he fumbles for the bog roll. His hand feels about as useful as a fucking flipper on a walrus – _good thing his bandmates have been ignoring him to record by themselves,_ he thinks, spitefully. _You’d get more out of slapping your balls on your bass than you would using your fingers._

One of the few benefits of this stage of detox misery is at least shitting doesn’t take all bloody afternoon. You can numb a lot with opiates but somehow it all ends up cheapened when you’re forced to claw your own impacted faeces out with the end of a spoon. This, at least, is cleared up with a cursory wipe and a shower.

It is immediately clear to Murdoc as he stands that he will not maintain the position for long. _Really ought to get some of those hand-hold bars for the showers that they get for old fogeys,_ he muses distantly as he sets the water onto something close to scalding and crawls into the bath on all-fours. Instantly his fringe is matted down and poking him in the eyes, but it can’t be helped and honestly, the warm, steady heat more than makes up for it.

It would be so easy, he thinks, shoulders hunched against the unyielding cold of the tile, to just take something and be done with it. He’s overdosed like that before – not a fun experience by a mile – because your limits are never where you think they are when you wait this long to dive back into oblivion, but it was different then. He was younger, cockier, immortal. Now he feels every year of his middle age and then some, the damage to his liver, his kidneys, all catching up at once. He’s got veins in his arms that are collapsed beyond saving, his nerves are fucked, and it just doesn’t work like it used to, none of it. Even speed just makes him slightly more manic, makes him chain-smoke until his jaw is physically sore from clenching to hold onto his fag, but he’s not productive. He hasn’t written anything in days, and anything that’s _not shit_ in… fuck. Too long. 

_And they’re doing just fine without you anyway._

It stings – of course it stings. Underneath all the layers of grime, sleaze, and venom, Murdoc’s still got a tender underbelly like any other living thing and he surprises himself in his capacity to, somehow, still register that he’s been hurt. After all these years of it – more than a half-century, _fuck_ – you’d think he’d have calloused up, evolved somehow. In some ways he supposes he has, but a callous may protect you from the odd splinter and do sweet sod all if you step on a piece of broken glass or something equally nasty. And this – this latest iteration of reality – feels a lot like he’s filled one of those little plastic kiddie pools with thumbtacks and rolled around in it.

He scratches the coagulating sick out of his bush with mechanical detachment, trying not to engage with his cock. There’s a lot of unresolved wrongness about the way he eroticizes his own trauma which, he’s sure, some smug twat of a head-shrink would have an absolute field day with. He used to think he was some kind of mad genius for pulling that one over on the universe – a ‘you think I’m fucking pathetic? jokes on you, I _love_ this shit’ and really the line between where genuine preference ends and kink-as-coping begins is muddled beyond all recognition – has been for – hell, decades at least. Probably back when he was still a bedwetting thumb-sucker with his hand on his knob every chance he got. Pathetic really – schoolkid shit he should’ve put behind him when he got old enough to cope with his problems with alcohol and heroin like a real grown-up. The cynicism of that thought is enough to make him snort – not quite a laugh as he feels too shit for it, but close enough.

_At least I’ve still got my roguish wit. That’s got to count for something._

Never being more grateful for the effect of years of unrestrained substance abuse on his erectile function, Murdoc washes the last of the sick off his balls and takes a minute to just exist in the steamy spray. He’s all over aches, and the heat is a help, but a soporific one. He’s heard of people drowning in baths – falling asleep and sinking under. Could you drown in a shower? Probably not, but if anyone could cock things up that badly he feels like he’d be in line to be the one to do it.

_Self-pity? Have we really sunk so low? Wallowing at your age –_

“- wallow if I bloody well please,” he spits. Eugh, his throat feels like an ashtray, and the less said about his gums the better.

It’d be easy, he thinks again. Overdosing – hell, why go to the trouble. Lie face down with the tap running, save everyone the bother, or open your veins like a teenaged girl and bleed out. How’s that for wallowing – sinking down voluntarily into a rut 6 feet underground. It’s cringy, is what it is – that’s what the kids’d call it these days. Desperate. Some old fuck past his sell by date popping stolen benzos and lurking about the house like some greasy old grifter. Not that benzos even work anymore – not the shit 2D’s on now anyway. Last time Murdoc swiped some Lorazepam he thought his heart was going to slow down to nothing. Fucked – supposed to help with panic attacks, not induce them.

_Maybe that’s what happens when you pickle your innards and scramble yourself like this. Wind up one of those shambling corpses who they dust off and haul on stage who spend the whole show twitching and slurring into their guitars._

“Fuckin’ embarrassment.”

The walk – more of a crawl really – back to his bedroom is grim, some perverse junkie Calvary that a younger, sharper Murdoc would have had a scathing sacrilegious zinger for in an instant, but all he can manage now is a low groan and a curse as he trips over a bottle on the way to his mattress. He falls forward and immediately recoils, the miasma of old sweat stinks to high heaven and now that he’s had time apart from it, the idea of returning to it makes him want to be sick again.

“Fuck… dark glasses.”

He finds some – a little bent out of shape but then, who’s he to judge? – and jams them onto his face. He’s nude – left his clothes in a heap by the shower. He doesn’t think he has anything clean to put on – didn’t think that far into things when he had a wash – but he finds an old robe in his closet – purple silky thing with lace on the hem, left behind by some nameless shag from what feels like lifetimes ago. It’s short, which normally wouldn’t bother him because he’s reasonably happy with his legs, as legs go, but cold as he is it’s not ideal. Still, choosy beggars and all that. He wraps himself up in it and ties the sash at the waist. His eyes flit of their own accord to the locked box in the closet – most people pour booze down the sink when they want to be rid of it, but Murdoc hadn’t had the stones for that, so he locked his stash in a portable safe and froze the key in an ice tray in the freezer downstairs. He wonders how hard it would be to just bash his way into the thing. Wasn’t like it was military grade – just some shit hundred dollar piece he’d gotten on eBay in a fit of self-loathing and irrational optimism that maybe this would accomplish more than it has so far – than it has done every other time he’s cut himself off over the years.

_Idiot._

He tries to ignore the triumphant crowing of the voice as he walks down to the kitchen with purpose in mind. The ice tray is where he left it, buried under a bag of peas and a tub of non-dairy ice cream that 2D’s been singlehandedly demolishing. He sees it, the tiny glint of mocking metal hidden in plain view. He removes it gingerly and walks to the sink, turning on the water to lukewarm. He’s not so far gone, so desperate or pathetic, to turn it to hot or to shatter the block in his hands but it’s a near thing. He sits the tray down under the faucet and watches the water run with morbid fascination.

Humming alerts him to his bandmate’s presence even before the startled “oh! Hey!” and he clenches his fists, braced as they are on the counter. He doesn’t want to deal with any of them today, but he _really_ doesn’t want to deal with 2D, not for a whole host of reasons.

“Didn’t know you were up – didn’t know you were _in._ Thought you were off…” he waves his hand awkwardly. Christ on a bike, this is uncomfortable, and Murdoc is too fucking exhausted for it.

“Well. I am. Here.”

_Now go away._

“Jus’ came for a – let me just reach ‘round you here.”

God, there’s a line he wouldn’t have let pass un-mocked in the old days.

“Sorry,” 2D mumbles as opens the freezer and reaches for his ice cream.

“Do you mind? Nearly took my bloody head off with that door,” Murdoc grumbles, but his heart’s not in it.

“Sorry.”

He doesn’t sound sorry – he’s not begging or sniveling or crying or any of the normal things he does when he’s trying to make amends. God, this brave new world is alien and the unpredictability of it is fucking loathsome. Murdoc doesn’t exactly miss the pitiful whimpering but at least he knew how to tune it out.

“So… wotcha doin’?”

_Waiting for you to leave._

The singer is oblivious as ever. That, at least, hasn’t changed.

“Good, this – mint chip. Doesn’t skimp on the chocolate.”

Murdoc wants to smash his own face into the edge of the countertop, but more than that, he wants to just dissociate into some kind of chemical oblivion where he wouldn’t be aware enough to _have to._

“– bought me one at Tesco but it was all crystal-y inside like they’d let it go melty –”

_Satan, kill me._

“Why’s there a key in the ice tray?”

_Please._

“Muds – are you washing it?”

“Huh?”

“Th’key.”

“Er… yeah. Been a while since – since I washed my keys.”

2D considers this seriously, a spoonful of ice cream dissolving in his mouth.

“Don’t think I’ve _ever_ washed mine. D’you think I should?”

“Can’t be too careful these days.”

“Mm.”

The key is defrosted now, free of its prison. Murdoc picks it up and weighs it in his palm. For something so small, it feels heavy enough to drag him down to rock bottom if he wants it to.

“I like the robe, by the way. Noodle said –”

“Ta.”

“Welcome. Noodle said we should – we should – we should talk more. You n’ me I mean, not me an’ her.”

It’s fucking surreal is what it is, standing in the kitchen in some old tart’s lace negligee while they both try to pretend the band dynamic isn’t completely fucked. Really, he’d prefer it if 2D tried to break his fingers or something – something fitting the kind of bullshit behaviour he put him through. This small talk, though, this is _real_ torture, psychological prisoner-of-war shit.

“– thinkin’ maybe we could make a night of it. Russ found some new pop-up place that has vegan enchiladas –”

“Could you – do me a favour?”

The words are out before he can think twice about it and 2D looks at him with so much suspicion he wants to eat the fucking key in his hand and let it rip his esophagus open on the way down.

“… what?”

He draws it out, eyes narrowing.

“Could you keep this for me?”

He lifts up the key in his still dripping hand, feeling strangely nervous.

“It’s clean now, ehghh…” he clears his throat and tries to keep his hand from shaking and giving away how sick he feels. The tremors are coming on again.

“What’s it open?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s not – something _bad_ is it? It’s not – not some sick joke like – like some kind of booby trap? Because in _Saw,_ they do stuff like that – they tell people ‘oh get out of this trap’ and this seems like the kind of thing that would –”

“It’s nothing like _Saw,_ for fuck’s sake – if you don’t want to take the key, then don’t take the sodding key!”

2D flinches – not anywhere near as bad as he used to do, but bad enough – and narrows his eyes.

“Look, if you don’t want to keep it, throw it away for all I care. I just – I don’t want it anymore.”

2D takes a long look at it, then at the sink where the water it was ‘washed in’ is still slowly draining away, the ice tray blocking most of the pipe.

“S’not been up your bum, has it?”

“Wha – no! That was –”

“I’m not falling for it again if it has.”

“It hasn’t been – just. Please.”

2D stares at him like he’s grown a second head. Murdoc saying please is rare as an eclipse, and him _meaning it_ is even rarer still. Wordlessly, the singer grabs the key and puts it in his trouser pocket.

“You need anything else?” he asks, still uneasy. Murdoc shrugs. He feels funny – almost shy and all out of sorts like he’s got his skin on inside out. He feels out-of-body, like he’s tripping, and where he expects to see two bandmates – two best mates – standing and chatting by the sink, he sees someone who’s on the up and turning his life around looking with pity on the poster child of a war on drugs campaign. He feels about as appealing as those necrotic lungs they print on packs of fags these days and the distance between Stu and him has never felt wider.

“I’d take a bite of that.”

He gestures to the tub of ice cream sweating in 2D’s hand. The taller man looks into it forlornly, then sighs.

“Alright, but you’re not using my spoon, and you only get one bite.”

The taste is strong, a bit much for his empty stomach, which clenches in protest. The cold temperature makes his teeth ache and goes straight to the roof of his mouth like an ice-pick through an eye socket.

“It’s good – right? Not stingy with the chocolate.”

He manages to nod, eyes watering. Just from the brain freeze, mind.

_Suuuuuuuure it is. When’d you become such a shit liar, anyway?_

“It’s good,” he chokes out.

“Well. If that’s it then. I’ll just… go.”

He wants to stop him leaving. Part of him wants to grab his arm and pull him back hard against the counter, knock some sense into that pretty, empty head. Part of him wants to say something stupid like ‘I wouldn’t say no to you tossing me off’ just to get a rise out of him, to see if he still blushed and cringed like he used to. To see if he could make him hate him because this – this… indifference is so, so much worse.

He wants to do _something,_ but his whole body aches, and his guts are burning again, and the sun’s too bright, and Stu’s gone anyway, away up the stairs with his ice cream and his newfound confidence and there’s nothing left to be done about anything, really, except give up.

The bedroom is dark as he left it. That’s good at least – soothes the pain some. Enough he can get to sleep if he tries. Murdoc entertains the idea of stripping the bed and putting on some fresh sheets, but he’ll only sweat through those too, and he feels so heavy, so worn, that it’s all he can do to slide under the clammy, stinking fabric and shut his throbbing eyes and try not to imagine a world where his skill as a lyricist was enough to help him know what to say to put things right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure if there's any glaring errors. My neighbours have been fucking for like 2 straight days and I haven't slept because all I can hear is them going at it. So I'm exhausted. Blame errors on their libidos and thin poor-people apartment walls. Also sorry if my 'Canadian trying to British' came out in the vibe of the piece. I like to think I did alright, but I'm a poor judge of most things in life.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, there's more of this now. which, if you like it, is good, i suppose. if you don't, sorry, i guess.
> 
> also, i am playing beyond fast and loose with location and layout of where they're living in this. fuck it. we're not here for architecture, we're here for angst and feels.

* * *

The faintest shred of grey dawn filters in through the drawn blinds and cuts a pale line down 2D’s long body. His bare chest, narrow, all ribs and concave planes, rises and falls gently in sleep. Part of Murdoc wants to pause, to stand longer and just stare at him, drink it in. In sleep he looks young – younger than he is by a mile, looks like he did when they met but healthier somehow. Less fragile. The blanket is slung low across his hips and his head is turned away, the white column of his throat swanlike and elegant and it’s effortless and staged and candid all at once, leaving the bassist a mess of contradictions.

If only voyeurism was as low as Murdoc was stooping.

Quiet as he can, he tiptoes over to the far wall and begins to search. He knows he should use his time wisely – think – be methodical about his movements – but all he can focus on is that he’s cold and trembling and more than that, he’s scared – more scared than he’s been in a long time – because he’s finally sober enough to remember what drives him to oblivion in the first place.

In the end, it’s a bong that does him in – stashed messily on the floor under a pile of used socks and pants. He drives his foot into it and curses before he can stop himself and he hears the tell-tale sound of bedsprings creaking as his bandmate blearily comes ‘round.

“Wah… Muds… it’s…” he squints at the clock on his nightstand. “Not even six yet.”

Murdoc is at a loss. He has no backup plan, no words – no explanation. He flounders, agitated, mind spinning uselessly, achieving nothing.

“Why’re you –”

“Remember that – that key I gave you? The other day?”

He’s sweating profusely and his stomach threatens to rebel on him – it’s worse than the withdrawal, now. It’s some kind of looming psychological collapse, panic attack, whatever you want to call it. _Can’t function without vices – haven’t in years. How’d you figure this’d go?_

“I’d – I’d like it back. Now.”

2D frowns at him, still visibly disoriented.

“I haven’t got it.”

“You – what?”

“You said ‘throw it away if you want to.’ Well, I threw it away.”

“Threw – where?” Murdoc hisses, livid and betrayed and terrified all at once.

“Dunno… I think it’s in the bin out back.”

“Fuck!”

Hand in his own hair, pulling, pain grounding him, he’s gone without so much as a parting bout of cursing, racing back to his room and stuffing himself into some dark trousers. He nearly turns his ankle in the process of forcing his boots on. The distance from bedroom to frigid morning outdoors feels like an odyssey through a minor hurricane and the next thing he knows he’s elbow deep in old garbage, frantically digging for that –

“Found it – Muds, look – it was in my –”

Sweet Satan, 2D nearly scares him to death, appearing behind him like a fucking phantasm. He whirls around, all panic and frantic energy, and nearly wrenches the singer's hand off trying to grab for the precious object, but the younger man uses his height to his advantage and holds it out of reach.

“What the – fucking – what are you _doing?!”_

He hates how he sounds, feral and spitting like a cornered animal.

“What’s it open?”

2D’s got that flat tone of voice that he’s been using with Murdoc lately, the ‘I’m tired of your bullshit’ voice and it makes everything about this situation worse.

“None of your fucking business.”

“It is! It is my business – you’re out here like a lunatic digging in the bin! I’m not giving it back until I know what it’s for.”

There’s that stubbornness, that quiet unbreakability of this new 2D that Murdoc has never hated more. _Gonna tell him? Why don’t you get on your knees and beg him, then? Get on your knees and beg for it and all – hardly that far to fall, now is it? How far’d you go to get that key back right now, huh? Would you let him put his cock in your mouth?_

“It’s – my stash, alright?”

_Pathetic._

“Your –”

“Drink. Drugs. The lot.”

2D’s eyes widen.

“What – all of it?”

“Yes, fucking all of it! I’m trying to – I was trying to –”

“You were trying to get clean,” 2D says, almost accusingly. “But you couldn’t – you’re back grovelling for it.”

He has no right to sound so disappointed – so hurt by this.

_Sure, he does. Look at all the success he’s been having – proper moral exemplar, is old Tusspot. Face of the band, showing you up –_

“I’m not going to _take anything_ – I just want –”

“What, you just want to open your safe or strongbox or whatever and count what’s in there? Come on, mate, I’m not that thick.”

The coldness that settles between them is miserable. 2D shakes his head, brow creased with displeasure and pain.

“I keep thinking you’re trying to change.”

That’s a surprise – a good surprise – that the efforts are, at least, being noticed.

_Steady on, he hasn’t said he believes it yet._

“I am,” Murdoc says quietly, eyes bulging in what he hopes is a pleading manner. His face feels alien – he’s not used to the vulnerability he’s put there.

“I don’t know that you are,” 2D replies, shaking his head. “You gave me this key, not telling me what it’s for, despite knowing I’ve been – I’ve got my own… history to work through. With substances.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve been doing better –”

The hurt expression on the singer’s face deepens and Murdoc, belatedly, realizes his mistake.

“Yeah, because I’ve been _dealing with it._ And you just handed me the keys to the fucking _Niccals Medicine Cabinet_ – and you never once thought I might find out what it’s for – that it might be _bad for me_ to have it – that maybe you should have _fucking asked first_. It never even crossed your mind, did it?”

_What’s one more lie? Go on, save your rotten hide. He won’t expect any better._

“I… I was desperate.”

_Not good enough, Mudsy._

“I’m sor–” a pause, “I should’ve told you.”

2D stares down at the key in his hand and turns away. He kicks the wall gently, rubbing the toe of his shoe back and forth across the rough brick.

“So fucking selfish,” he mutters. “Can’t even apologize.”

“I… want to, though.”

He says it so softly that he isn’t surprised when 2D acts like he hasn’t heard.

“I want to – doesn’t that count for… anything?”

He hesitates, then takes a step forward. 2D half turns towards him, not quite face-to-face, not quite to the side.

“It’s too little too late, mate.”

Murdoc’s heart plummets. He half expected it, but had, foolishly, been relying on 2D’s transient kind streak to see him through. Like all musicians, Stu’s got his own hang-ups, his own ego, can be a right cunt when he wants to be, but he's got a real gentleness to him, normally, and the directness of his present reply lacks his usual mellow edge.

“That’s it then,” Murdoc sighs. He pivots to stare into the open bin, groping for the strength to pitch himself in with the refuse. He feels too tired to move, but the will is there.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing for it – I’m past my usefulness now. Might as well pack it in.”

“Muds, I don’t mean – you can still – there’s ways you _could_ fix things!” 2D backpedals. “I’m asking for more, not asking for you to – to throw everything away.”

When Murdoc doesn’t reply, 2D lowers his voice.

“It’s like that then? That bad?”

“You know withdrawals,” Murdoc shrugs.

“And you really – really went off everything at once?”

Murdoc grunts noncommittally.

“That’s really, really dangerous, you know that, right? Puts your body through the ringer.”

“Yes, well, so does uncontrolled substance abuse. It’s not like I was up to my ears in choices,” he snaps back, and feels immediately miserable for doing so. “Look – I know – I know that came from a place of… concern.”

2D just waits, just stares at him, unimpressed. Murdoc sighs.

“I’m _sorry,_ right? There. I can say it – no need to twist my arm.”

“Sorry for what?”

_God, he really is a little sadist. Must’ve rubbed off on him more than you thought – heh._

“For… for all of it. For being a shit bandmate and a shit friend and a shit person. There. Satisfied?”

2D runs a hand through his hair in frustration, brow creasing. He looks his age, suddenly, an overgrown boy-turned-man-approaching-middle-age. It’s weird. Uncanny.

“You’re not _shit._ Your attitude, behaviour, whatever, that’s shit.”

“Same, though, when you get right down to it.”

“No,” 2D replied simply. “S’different. We wouldn’t keep someone who was shit in the band.”

With that, he turns and begins to walk back to the house, humming softly under his breath. Murdoc is rooted to the spot, somehow aware that following at his singer’s heels wouldn’t be good for either of them. His heart is doing something strange, convulsing painfully.

“As – as a bassist, you mean, right?” he calls before he can help himself. 2D doesn’t even slow his stride.

“You’re family, Muds. You’re a nutter, but you’re family.”

And then he’s gone. Murdoc hears the door open and close, but his eyes aren’t focusing. He sags against the wall and just stands there, cold morning air biting into his skin.

He doesn’t quite know the word for the cocktail of feelings he’s got in him, but he thinks there’s more hope in the mix than usual. Hope with a chaser of optimism.

He shakes his head to clear it, squints up at the morning sky – pale ice blue, now – and, in a very small and private way, he smiles.


End file.
